BJP did precious little on black money issue when in power: Congress

As LK Advani embarked on a yatra to focus on the black money issue, Congress Tuesday sought to point out how BJP had done precious little in the matter when it was in power and to project by contrast how the UPA has been "pro-active".

Party spokesman  Manish Tewari told reporters that in its endevaour to tackle the menace of black money, the UPA government had in the last two years amended the Double Taxation Avoidance agreements with 81 countries and effected Tax Information Exchange agreements with four countries known to be tax havens.

Besides, he said the Directorate of Transfer Pricing detected mispricing of Rs34,145 crores during the period and Directorate of International Taxation collected taxes to the tune of Rs33,784 crores for cross-border transactions.

Tewari said 9920 pieces of information regarding details of assets and payments received by Indian citizens in foreign countries were being investigated.

The CBDT detected concealed income of Rs18,750 crore, he said adding that under relevant agreement, France provided information of 69 Indians having bank accountings there from which an unaccounted income of Rs397 crore was unearthed.

The concerte actions of the UPA showed that the issue of black money cannot be tackled by "mere tokenism and symbolism as was being done by BJP, as against the hard and resolute" action of the UPA.

"There is a world of difference between words and deeds," he added.